Identification of a tumor-reactive T-cell repertoire in the immune infiltrate of patients with resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Purpose: The devastating prognosis of patients with resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) presents an urgent need for the development of therapeutic strategies targeting disseminated tumor cells. Until now, T-cell therapy has been scarcely pursued in PDA, due to the prevailing view that it represents a poorly immunogenic tumor.

Experimental Design: We systematically analyzed T-cell infiltrates in tumor biopsies from 127 patients with resectable PDA by means of immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, T-cell receptor (TCR) deep-sequencing and functional analysis of expanded T-cell cultures.

[Interaction between cigarette smoking and glucocorticoids therapy and therapeutic doses of radioiodine (131I) in patients with Graves’ disease].

Unlabelled: The present study evaluated the effects of smoking on the amount of therapeutic doses of radioiodine ((131)I) given to patients with Graves’ disease (GB). The study also retrospectively analyzed the relationship between the onset of symptoms of thyroid ophthalmopathy (OT) after treatment with (131)I within 2 years and changes of TSHR-Abs levels, and the impact of prednisone administration before and after the therapy on OT development in both smoking and non-smoking patients.

Materials And Methods: The study group included 116 patients, 97 women and 19 men, aged 28 ÷ 77 years (average 51 years) who were diagnosed with GB and treated with therapeutic doses of (131)I.

Genome-wide methylation screen in low-grade breast cancer identifies novel epigenetically altered genes as potential biomarkers for tumor diagnosis.

Aberrant DNA methylation constitutes a well-established epigenetic marker for breast cancer. Changes in methylation early in cancer development may be clinically relevant for cancer detection and prognosis-based therapeutic decisions. In the present study, a combination of methyl-CpG immunoprecipitation (MCIp) and human CpG island (CGI) arrays was applied to compare genome-wide DNA methylation profiles in 10 low-grade in situ and invasive breast cancers against 10 normal breast samples.

Regulation of transcription in cancer.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview on the regulation of transcription in cancer cells. We describe here standard mechanisms of transcription in eukaryotic cells, an influence of common promoter polymorphisms contributing to malignant progression and DNA methylation as significant aspect of gene regulation. We also described transcription factors mechanism of action, and how their alteration can result in cancer.

Glycosylases and AP-cleaving enzymes as a general tool for probe-directed cleavage of ssDNA targets.

The current arsenal of molecular tools for site-directed cleavage of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) is limited. Here, we describe a method for targeted DNA cleavage that requires only the presence of an A nucleotide at the target position. The procedure involves hybridization of a complementary oligonucleotide probe to the target sequence.